Brilliant analysis by Ricgard Heinberg of the race for U.S. President. Both "leaders" are stuck in Wizard-of-Oz-like fairy tales of growth and energy cornucopia. I guess we get the "leaders" we deserve.

Greek debt crisis is small beer compared to these figures, but still most capitalists will fight tooth and nail to prevent the dramatic measures needed - we need carbon austerity and different structural reforms.

The problem for the Euro project is that it has become captured by an economic ideology, and austerity is that ideology’s principle weapon. A self-confident and mature Eurozone would be able to tolerate diversity, rather than trying to crush any dissent. A Eurozone captured by an ideology will insist there is but one path, and that the imperative of austerity is too important to accommodate democratic wishes. Pursuing that ideology has brought the Eurozone to the brink, where it is prepared to force out one of its uncooperative members. Critics of austerity are not trying to destroy to Eurozone, but save it from the grip of this self-destructive ideology.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Brilliant must-read analysis by Simon Wren-Lewis on how the austerity fundamentalist are killing the European project.

Europe’s leaders will have the unique opportunity to commit two mistakes in a single week. On Monday, Europe’s leaders will decide on the future of Greece. On Thursday and Friday, they will meet again to discuss, among other things, the future governance of the eurozone. The latter is more important in the long run: a healthy eurozone may even withstand a Greek exit from the single currency and prosper. But a crippled eurozone would be no less crippled if Greece were to remain a member. A dual failure would be a disaster.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Pretty pessimistic analysis by Wolfgang Munchau (FT) on Grexit and the future of the eurozone

Guardians of financial stability are deliberately provoking a bank run and endangering Europe's system in their zeal to force Greece to its knees

Willy De Backer's insight:

One of the best article on the real hidden agenda of the EU's financial elites. 'The EU is worried about political “moral hazard”, about what Podemos might achieve in Spain, or the eurosceptics in Italy, or the Front National in France, if Syriza is seen to buck the system and get away with it.'

Fresh fears about the singularity have prompted new critiques of what it will mean for humanity.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Excellent analysis in the Atlantic about Artificial Intelligence and the over-optimistic and over-pessimistic narratives about this issue. Great conclusion: "The lesson of AI is not that the light of mind and consciousness is beginning to shine in machines, but rather the dimming of our own lights at the dawn of a new era".

Clearly, belief in the indispensability of economic growth, while deeply rooted in governments virtually worldwide, is quite recent. The common view that growth has always been an important objective of government is mistaken.

That growth is inextricably bound up with human nature is an even greater mistake, if it makes us think that there really is no alternative to economic growth. Understanding that growth is not a necessary goal of government policy is critical if we are to imagine alternative economic futures.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Great, must-read article by Tim Jackson and Peter Victor - from the new State of the World Report 2015

What we measure reveals both our worldview and our values. It is time to wildly revision what it is to be human... and in doing so to also revision what it is that makes life richly fulfilling. What is it we really want to grow in our lives?

What we are talking about is a new conception: The idea of the Partner State. At its essence, the Partner State is an enabling state. It facilitates and provides the maximum space and opportunity for civil society to generate goods and services for the fulfillment of common needs.

It is a State whose primary orientation is the promotion of the common good, not private gain. And, in contrast to a view of the citizen as a passive recipient of public services, the Partner State requires a new conception of productive citizenship. Of citizenship understood as a verb, not a noun.

maybe flat carbon emissions are actually telling us something "no one" wants to hear: that economic growth has faltered or even halted for a large portion of the world's people and that we are going to have to deal with the consequences of that until we design a new system that can either grow for the benefit of everyone--a difficult proposition--or that can sustainably, equitably and successfully manage a steady-state economy--an even more difficult proposition.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Must-read analysis of the growth and greenhouse emissions puzzle: "As long as the chimera of perpetual growth can be sold to the masses, no one will have to deal with the thorny issue of redistribution as the primary method for the economic betterment of the middle and lower classes."

technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. Huge swaths of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they believe to be unnecessary. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.”

Mason is not alone in believing that humanity is on the cusp of a profound technological revolution, of course. What makes his analysis distinctive, however, is the way he fuses an account of the technological mutations of what used to be called “late capitalism” with an attempt to identify, as Engels put it in the late 19th century, the “midwife of the old society pregnant with a new one.” This won’t be the industrial working class, as Marx and Engels thought, but what Mason calls the “network.” By creating millions of networked people, Mason writes, “info-capitalism has created a new agent of change in history: the educated and connected human being.”

Willy De Backer's insight:

Great interview in Prospect about Paul Mason's latest book 'Postcapitalism: a guide to our future'

The modern day external shocks are clear: energy depletion, climate change, ageing populations and migration. They are altering the dynamics of capitalism and making it unworkable in the long term. They have not yet had the same impact as the Black Death – but as we saw in New Orleans in 2005, it does not take the bubonic plague to destroy social order and functional infrastructure in a financially complex and impoverished society.

Once you understand the transition in this way, the need is not for a supercomputed Five Year Plan – but a project, the aim of which should be to expand those technologies, business models and behaviours that dissolve market forces, socialise knowledge, eradicate the need for work and push the economy towards abundance. I call it Project Zero – because its aims are a zero-carbon-energy system; the production of machines, products and services with zero marginal costs; and the reduction of necessary work time as close as possible to zero.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Absolute must-read article from Paul Mason in the Guardian on the transition to a post-growth, post-capitalist society.

Whatever the outcome of the referendum, tough times are ahead. To survive, Greek society will need to reinvigorate the commons and communal solidarity.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Written before the No referendum and Tsipras surrender to the politico-financial complex, this article shows the correct way for Greece: a plan C for a radical transformation of the economy based on communal action from below.

Syriza's mistake: to accept the austerians framing of the alternatives.

We’re pretty good at noticing the immediate effects of technology’s substituting for workers, such as fewer people on the factory floor. What’s harder is anticipating the second-order effects of this transformation, such as what happens to the consumer economy when you take away the consumers.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Brilliant must-read analysis of the coming 'post-work' society in The Atlantic.

Economic theories, though social constructions, can reflect reality to varying degrees. In the face of dire environmental challenges, adopting a realistic theory is key to the survival of global civilization. The neoliberal emphasis on limitless growth and monetary flows, a relic of nineteenth century thinking, abstracts away from biological conditions. By contrast, ecological economics—as distinct from environmental economics, which remains wedded to the neoliberal growth paradigm—understands the economy as...

There can be little doubt that Europe has needed, for quite some time, many serious institutional reforms – from the avoidance of tax evasion and the fixing of more reasonable retiring ages to sensible working hours and the elimination of institutional rigidities, including those in the labour markets. But the real (and strong) case for institutional reform has to be distinguished from an imagined case for indiscriminate austerity, which does not do anything to change a ­system while hugely inflicting pain. Through the bundling of the two together as a kind of chemical compound, it became very difficult to advocate reform without simultaneously cutting public expenditure all around. And this did not serve the cause of reform at all.

f the global population is to live safely within the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, we must be prepared – especially those of us in the developed regions of the world – to reimagine the good life by embracing ‘simpler ways’ of living based on notions of moderation, frugality, appropriate technology, and sufficiency.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Worthwhile read on how to live the good life within the planetary limits.

CIC regards all of this as evidence that the state is no longer willing to honor its social contract with citizens. Accordingly, it has called for civil disobedience to unjust laws and is doing everything it can to establish its own social order with a more humane logic and ethic.

Willy De Backer's insight:

David Bollier on the Catalan Integral Cooperative, 'one of the more audacious commons-based innovations to have emerged in the past five years'

Given the various problems associated with existing basic income schemes, not least of which is funding, issuing social dividends from user fees on shared resources could be a sensible alternative to the tax-funded benefit programs considered above. The social dividend approach would address a number of the concerns that drive proponents of a citizen’s income, such as providing a non-labour supplement to falling wages and incomes, or reducing social and economic exclusion.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Brilliant must-read analysis of the basic income debate looking at social and ecological alternatives to the current neo-liberal hegemony.

the growth in net energy appears to have slowed while EROI of fossil fuels continues to fall. That has led to greater competition for the available net energy and a general rise in fossil fuel prices from 2000 onward. There have been fluctuations, sometimes violent ones, tied to the so-called Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 and to the softening of the world economy in the past year which led to steep declines in oil prices (something which may be telling us there is another recession in the offing).

Ultimately, IS is a cancer of modern industrial capitalism in meltdown, a fatal by-product of our unwavering addiction to black gold, a parasitical symptom of escalating civilisational crises across both the Muslim and Western worlds. Until the roots of these crises are addressed, IS and its ilk are here to stay.

Willy De Backer's insight:

Brilliant analysis of the roots of Islamic State by Nafeez Ahmed. Must-read.

This vast expansion of debt on the backs of marginal borrowers and the expansion of risky investments has greatly increased the systemic risk of losses from defaults arising from over-extended borrowers.

No wonder every attempt to further expand debt-based consumption is yielding diminishing returns: net income is stagnant virtually everywhere in the bottom 95% of the populace, and further declines in interest rates are increasingly marginal as rates are near-zero everywhere that isn’t suffering a collapse in its currency.

The diminishing returns manifest in three ways: the gains from each round of central-bank tricks are declining, the periods of stability following the latest “save” are shrinking and the amplitude of each episode of debt crisis is expanding

Willy De Backer's insight:

How the growth of global debt is fueling the zero-growth economy - good article from Peak Prosperity

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